Parts and Wholes in Semantics

Friederike Moltmann

First systematic semantic investigation of expressions relating to part-whole structure in natural language

Offers an original, philosophically and linguistically motivated alternative to standard extensional mereological theories of plurals and mass nouns, based on the notion of an integrated whole

Develops a theory of situated part structures as a new application of situation semantics

By a leader researcher working in the interface between philosophy and natural language semantics

Parts and Wholes in Semantics

Friederike Moltmann

Description

This book develops a unified account of expressions involving the notions of "part" and "whole" in which principles of the individuation of part structures play a central role. Moltmann presents a range of new empirical generalizations with data from English and a variety of other languages involving plurals, mass nouns, adnominal and adverbial modifiers such as as a whole, together, and alone, nominal and adverbial quantifiers ranging over parts, and expressions of completion such as completely and partly. She develops a new theory of part structures which differs from traditional mereological theories in that the notion of an integrated whole plays a central role and in that the part structure of an entity is allowed to vary across different situations, perspectives, and dimensions.

Parts and Wholes in Semantics

Friederike Moltmann

Table of Contents

I.: Introduction II.: The Formal Semantic Framework and the Treatment of Distributivity III.: Semantic Selection, Part Structures, and Perspectives IV.: Part Structures and Quantification V.: Metrical and Other Lexical Specifications of Part Structures VI.: Dimensions of Parts and Wholes and the Part Structure of Events VII.: The Mass-Count Distinction for Verbs and Adverbial Quantification over Events VIII.: Concluding Remark about Part Structures and Natural Language

Parts and Wholes in Semantics

Friederike Moltmann

Author Information

Friederike Moltmann is senior researcher at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in Paris. She had previously taught both linguistics and philosophy at various universities in the US and the UK. She has published numerous articles in both linguistic and philosophical journals.

Parts and Wholes in Semantics

Friederike Moltmann

Reviews and Awards

"This book is a very interesting one. It presents new and promising views of the count/plural/mass distinction, supporting them through extensive discussions of many phenomena. The basic idea - in singling out special entities which play a major role in accounting for count- and plural-like behaviour, according to contextually controllable integrity conditions - is challenging and with far-reaching consequences. Moreover, the breadth of coverage, and the attempts at discussing crosslinguistic and comparative evidence are worth particular notice." - Fabio Pianesi, Linguistics and Philosophy

Parts and Wholes in Semantics

Friederike Moltmann

From Our Blog

What makes something we see or something we talk about a single thing, or simply a unit that we can identify and that we can distinguish from others and compare to them? For ordinary objects like trees, chairs, mountains, and lakes, the answer seems obvious.